Curatorial & Research

Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales

Social & Cultural History

Folk Tales

Introduction

As well as the long and rich tradition of writing prose and poetry in Welsh found in Wales since the 6th century, there has also been a particular emphasis on oral storytelling. Wales, a country of some 8,000 square miles at the western edge of Britain with a population of just under three million, is geographically speaking indisputably small. Despite this, the native language of Wales, Welsh (one of the Celtic languages belonging to the Indo-European group), has been spoken since the 6th century. It is one of the oldest living languages in Europe today and 21 per cent of the population of Wales still speak it, while a far greater number have some understanding of it.